President

The President’s Message

You are about to discover a unique learning community at one of the most demographically diverse educational institutions on the planet. Here at AUP, everyone is a language learner; here virtually everyone is a foreigner in an international environment in which all feel “at home.” AUP is a true 21st-century world university with an incomparable urban campus in the most beautiful city in the world, and a curriculum specifically designed for the global explorers it is our unique destiny as a university to educate.

Over the past decade, the University has made tangible progress toward its founder’s dream of “transcending the bounds of narrow nationalism” by creating a community of learning that crosses and ultimately effaces cultural boundaries. Not only have we planned purpose-built learning spaces to house these kinds of interactions amongst students and between students and faculty; we have also built research centers arising from our mission, mounted rigorous Master’s programs, articulated increasing numbers of academic partnerships, and hosted international conferences that foreground AUP faculty scholarship and that of renowned scholars, practitioners, and artists worldwide. In recent years the University has taken its place as the leading American academic, intellectual and cultural center at the confluence of France, Europe and the world. In this unique learning environment—inflected by the remarkable demographic diversity of student, faculty and staff bodies—attention is daily brought to bear on the role of knowledge production across languages, cultures, ethnicities, faiths, ideologies and ethical positions in an ever-globalizing world.

Ours is education for one world. This year, we are hosting 110 nationalities on campus; our faculty numbers 30 nationalities. Eighty languages and dialects are spoken on campus right now. The AUP entering class has brought 118 languages and dialects into the University since 2002; our graduates live and work in 141 countries worldwide.

Celeste M. SchenckPresident of The American University of Paris

AUP offers an innovative pedagogical model integrating classroom learning and hands-on experience that prepares students to master and to make, to reflect and to apply, to analyze and to act. Students are prepared to enter graduate school or the global workplace by experiencing a curriculum that marries the best of liberal arts deep learning with vocationally enhancing application of that learning. Our students—hungry for academic rigor and for profound personal development in an international setting—leave AUP as creative problem solvers with the skills to cross both borders and disciplines. Our faculty accomplishes innovative interdisciplinary research in the traditional humanities, social science and science fields, as well as in the domains of cultural translation, international relations and public policy; international business; and film, media, and global communications. AUP hosts annually over 200 lectures and seminars, many international conferences, multiple film series, and speakers’ series in both the humanities and the social sciences. The University is at the epicenter of multiple international networks, having articulated partnerships with academic institutions such as George Washington University, The University of Southern California, Emory University, Denison College, the Sorbonne, Oxford University, Cape Town University in South Africa, as well as three consortia that include other American universities abroad: the Association of American International Colleges and Universities (AAICU), the Consortium of American Academic Libraries Abroad (AMICAL), and the Global Liberal Arts Alliance (GLAA).

Ours is education for one world. This year, we are hosting 110 nationalities on campus; our faculty numbers 30 nationalities. Eighty languages and dialects are spoken on campus right now. The AUP entering class has brought 118 languages and dialects into the University since 2002; our graduates live and work in 141 countries worldwide. To each of you entering this very special community, I promise that you will be transformed by our diversity and galvanized by the engagements it fosters. Because you are so much of the world, you will become forever for the world.

Together with the Board of Trustees, the University’s professional leadership team, the students, alumni, faculty and staff of AUP, I take great pride in welcoming you to our academic community and in inviting you to explore the world of learning that goes on at our University by availing yourself of the wealth of information on our new website. I look forward to hearing from you directly should you wish to share your comments and suggestions. You can write to me directly at president@aup.edu.